Actor Nicolas Cage has played some crazy characters over his long and illustrious career, but none crazier than his latest role.
In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage plays himself.
During his decades on screen, Cage has played many memorable roles in over 100 movies, including Cameron Poe in Con Air, Stanley Goodspeed in The Rock, and Castor Troy in Face/Off.
But now it's time for a face-off of a different kind - one with himself.
For Cage, playing another character is much easier than playing himself.
"If you're playing another character with somebody else's name, you can hide behind that character and it's not all on you and you're not potentially embarrassing your family, hopefully," he said.
"But when you play Nic Cage, there's a lot of other Cages running around and I don't want to humiliate them any more than I want to humiliate myself."
For the record, there's no humiliation in sight. It turns out that a movie with Cage playing a fictionalised version of himself is just what we all need right now - the film is quietly sitting at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
But seriously, how crazy was this idea?
"This would be the most bonkers, as you so well put, concept for a movie. I think it was thoroughly daunting and challenging," Cage said.
"There was no muscle in my body that told me I should play a character named Nic Cage in a movie. It just scared the everything out of me. I said no about four times."
Then the little-known writer and director Tom Gormican sat down and wrote his hero a letter.
"It was a good letter, an intelligent letter, it was sensitive. I knew he was a genuine film enthusiast and he also wanted to make a movie about people, not cartoons," Cage said.
In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage plays a version of himself, a movie star falling on harder times who agrees - for $1 million - to attend the birthday party of a Spanish superfan named Javi.
But Javi is being stalked by the CIA and suddenly of all Cage's many roles get to play out in real life. Well, kind of real life.
It is, quite literally, the role Cage was born to play - and he did it for his fans.
"I've been blessed with a loyal group of fans or film enthusiasts that have stuck with me, because I think they know we're going to have that relationship like I would have when I would watch my heroes like Marlon Brando," he said.
"I would be like, 'I know you, I know what you're feeling', because he was sincere and I feel with this movie we have it again."
The unbearable wait for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is almost over - the film opens in cinemas next week.
